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—— An art project based on the kill switch
A
This is a time when science and art are more inclusive.
R
Over the centuries, humans and technology have become more and more symbiotic.
Art has always been an indispensable way for human beings to reflect on and explore the meaning of life.
T
With the development of science and technology,
the combination of art and technology is the future trend.
The mission of artists makes us think about how to re-understand human nature in today's technological age.
C A F A
In 2022, we formed CAFA_China, the first bio-art team in China, which has been participating in IGEM 2022. CAFA_China is a new interdisciplinary art team that explores the fields of synthetic biology and art through practice.We focus on the possibilities between synthetic biology and artistic creation.
We conducted research with Bluepha and deeply cooperated with BNSC_China (ONCE) to discuss art and synthetic biology, and finally determined our project scheme -- an art project about kill switch. With the rapid development of synthetic biology technology, the limitations of human understanding of life code and the lag of bioethics development have begun to surface the problems of biosecurity and network biosecurity hidden in the technology. Therefore, in scientific research, "kill switch" has become an artificial system to resist unknown public health hazards and environmental hazards. It has been widely used in various synthetic bioengineering projects, making great contributions to biosafety.
We hope that through this art project, we can lead artists to in-depth practice and explore new perceptual experience.At the same time, our kill switch can become a new (biosafety) tool, which can be used by more scientific researchers. In practice, we feed our experience and thinking back into our artistic thinking, so that the communication between art and synthetic biology becomes smooth.
P r o j e c t D e s i g n
A
Plan A:
Death from UV pollution
We designed to use UV-inducible switch, which is sulAp promoter (BBa_K518010) proposed by iGEM11_UT-Tokyo (2011), to turn on the expression of lethal gene.
After full exposure of sunlight, bacteria can synthesize toxins and die. And the lethal gene we chose is the relE toxin (BBa_K185047). The expression of the relE gene has been shown to severely inhibit translation and prevent colony formation [1].
After continuous design and debugging, we built the following gene circuit and successfully tested it through experiment. SulAp promoter activates the expression of downstream genes. The hrpR gene (BBa_K4226001) codes for hrpR protein.
hrpR protein binds to hrpS (BBa_K4226002) protein forming a complex, and the promoter hrpL (BBa_K4226003) is transcriptionally upregulated by hrpR and hrpS.
The expression of relE toxin was also up-regulated. Besides, the reporting system including 3WJ-Bro (BBa_K4226000) and mScarlet-I (BBa_K3977002) was used to detect RNA and protein synthesis of relE gene.
B
Plan B:
T4 lysis Device and beta-galactosidase synthesis
We designed a suicide pathway based on T4 lysis Device, a system derived from bacteriophage T4, which has two main components: T4 holin (BBa_K112805) and T4 endolysin (BBa_K112806), that cause the bacteria to rupture and die. We used the arabinose inducible pBad/araC as promoter (BBa_I0500) and inserted the lacZ gene (BBa_I732019) in the T4 lysis Device. The lacZ gene controls the synthesis of β-galactosidase, which can react with X-Gal in blue color.
We present this series of reactions through visual processing in the form of art installation. In the art installation, the liquid after the blue reaction is represented by tears dripping from the reaction container, as if the giant's tears are falling from the sky. This installation reflects the cooperation and combination of synthetic biology and art. We hope that this art installation can bring people more thinking about synthetic biology and life. Today, with the rapid development of technology, the life system we rely on is constantly being changed by human beings. This blue tear, as a warning, slowly drops, reminding us to reflect on the impact of human behavior and activities on the whole system.
